Online media reporting of suicidal behaviour in Ghana: Analysis of adherence to the WHO guidelines

Background:

Irresponsible media reporting of suicide is a potential risk for copycat suicide. There is a paucity of studies from sub-Saharan Africa on the quality of media reporting of suicide.

Objectives:

We assessed the compliance of Ghanaian online media outlets with the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for media reporting of suicide.

Methods:

We searched 10 local media outlets with strong online presence in Ghana, to identify suicide-related news reports from 2000 through 2019. We applied summative content analysis and chi-square (χ2) test to the data.

Results:

We included 288 news reports, of which 261 (90.6%) were completed suicides, 7 (2.4%) were attempted suicides and 20 (6.9%) were homicide suicides. Most of the news reports failed to comply with the WHO guidelines: 92.7% mentioned the specific method of the suicide act, 82.6% included ‘suicide’ in the headline and 55.6% included photos of the victims. The χ2 tests indicated that privately owned media outlets were more likely than publicly owned to post a photo of the victim, χ2(1) = 17.37, p < .001, and report the incident location in the headline, χ2(1) = 15.00, p < .001. However, generally, there were no statistically significant relationships between the quality of reporting and media outlet ownership. Each of the 288 reports failed to mention any of the potentially helpful features recommended by the WHO guidelines.

Conclusion:

Regardless of the ownership of the media outlet (whether private or publicly owned), mostly, the online reportage of suicidal behaviour in Ghana deviates sharply from the international recommended best practice by the WHO.